mathematics

Our World in Data

Our World in Data is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Our World in Data rather than just read about it. In short: Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, war, climate change, population growth, existential risks, and inequality. It is a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales, and was founded by Max Roser, a social historian and development economist.

Key takeaways

Our World in Data belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Our World in Data to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Our World in Data from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, war, climate change, population growth, existential risks, and inequality. It is a project of the Global Change Data Lab, a registered charity in England and Wales, and was founded by Max Roser, a social historian and development economist. The research team is based at the University of Oxford. The organization is chaired by Hetan Shah.

Content Our World in Data uses interactive charts and maps to illustrate research findings, often taking a long-term view to show how global living conditions have changed over time.

As of April 2024, Our World in Data categorize their charts and articles by the following topics on their website:

Population and Demographic Change Health Energy and Environment Food and Agriculture Poverty and Economic Development Education and Knowledge Innovation and Technological Change Living Conditions, Community, and Wellbeing Human Rights and Democracy Violence and War

History Roser began his work on the project in 2011, adding a research team at the University of Oxford later on. In the first years, Roser developed the publication together with inequality researcher Sir Tony Atkinson. Hannah Ritchie joined in 2017 and became Head of Research. Edouard Mathieu joined in 2020 and became Head of Data. The organization began the COVID-19 pandemic with six staff members, and grew to 20 by late 2021. In 2019, Our World in Data won the Lovie Award, a European web award, and was one of three nonprofit organizations in Y Combinator's Winter 2019 cohort. Beginning in 2020, Our World in Data added an emphasis on publishing global data and research on the COVID-19 pandemic:

They created and maintained a worldwide database on vaccinations for COVID-19, which was used as the source for data published by the World Health Organization, researchers and other international organizations, journals, and numerous newspapers. Similarly, the team built and maintained a global dataset on COVID-19 testing which was used by the United Nations, the White House, the World Health Organization, and epidemiologists and researchers, and also published data such as hospitalizations and computations of excess deaths. In 2021, the team began campaigning for the International Energy Agency to make the data it collects from national governments publicly available.

Funding and collaborations

Global Change Data Lab, the non-profit that publishes Our World in Data and the open-access data tools that make the online publication possible, is funded through a mix of grants, sponsors, and reader donations.

The first grant to support the research project was given by the Nuffield Foundation, a London-based foundation focused on social policy. Other grantors supporting the project have included the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a grant from German philanthropist Susanne Klatten. In the past, Our World in Data has also received grants from the World Health Organization, the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom, and the Effective Altruism Meta Fund. Reader donations are also a major source of funding. In 2020, more than 3,000 individuals supported the project, exceeding 4,000 donors by 2023. The list of donors includes Jamie Metzl and YouTuber Hank Green. The research team collaborated with the science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team partnered with epidemiologists from Harvard's Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Koch Institute to study countries that have responded successfully in the early phase of the pandemic. Janine Aron and John Muellbauer worked with OWID to research excess mortality during the pandemic. In 2022, FTX's Future Fund offered Our World in Data a $7.5 million grant to support their activities. Max Roser told Fortune that Our World in Data's board of trustees ultimately rejected the grant money after conducting due diligence and other checks.

Usage In 2021, the Our World in Data website had 89 million unique visitors. Our World in Data has been cited in academic scientific journals, medicine and global health journals, and social science journals. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Economist have used Our World in Data as a source. The site uses permissive licenses to allow others to copy, modify, and distribute the work (CC BY for content and the MIT License for software).

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Our World in Data

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Our World in Data claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Our World in Data before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Our World in Data ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Our World in Data

In research: Our World in Data appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Our World in Data in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Our World in Data is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Creative Commons-licensed works, Data and information visualization software, Development economics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Our World in Data outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Our World in Data in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Our World in Data means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Our World in Data out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Our World in Data in simple terms?

Why does Our World in Data matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Our World in Data?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Our World in Data.